Roridula gorgonias, Clethra arborea: assemblies and annotation

Carnivorous plants are distributed across the tree of life, and plant carnivory has evolved at least six times independently in five major plant lineages. However, sequenced and annotated nuclear genomes of only four of these remarkable plants are currently available, three of which are within the Lamiales. More data is needed to study the evolution and molecular adaptations involving plant carnivory, and to determine unique and shared adaptations to carnivory in different lineages. We have sequenced and structurally annotated the nuclear genome of the carnivorous Roridula gorgonias and that of its non-carnivorous relative, Madeira's lily-of-the-valley-tree, Clethra arborea, both within the Ericales. Our assemblies show high BUSCO scores of 84.2% (R. gorgonias) and 89.5% (C. arborea), the respective genome assemblies have total lengths of 284 Mbp and 511 Mbp. The R. gorgonias genome adds an important resource to study the evolutionary genetics of plant carnivory across angiosperm lineag...